Blog Network Review: SEO Fightback
Blog networks, those two words make Google webspam employees cringe. Why? Because they’re extremely effective at ranking sites and they are incredibly difficult to stop algorithmically. You might remember a few months ago when Google made a big deal about manually (they didn’t admit to that) going through and devaluing or penalizing public networks like ALN and Build My Rank. There were still some small networks hanging around but most of them were really poor quality sites that didn’t make it out of the Penguin update alive. Fast forward to July/August 2012. Mike Carlin, a well respected acquaintance of mine in a few SEO forums, launched SEO Fightback.
When you hear, “blog network” it begs the question, “What keeps it from getting found out by Google”. The only way to have a truly private blog network is by keeping it quiet and to have no footprint. SEO Fightback’s only footprint was WordPress. It connects the sites using a plugin (which should be renamed and disallowed in robots.txt). The next feature really impressed me as well, a one-click removal of all of the links in the network. If the network got found out, just click a button and you’re out of it. Of course, the negative link velocity will hurt but it’s better than getting stuck with a hundred direct links to your homepage from deindexed domains.
Setting up SEO Fightback is similar to ALN. You submit your site (with plugin installed and verified) to a network. There are completely private networks that people create and there are semi-private ones that you can submit to. I have set up a completely private one with a few buddies but I mostly submit to the semi-private ones. You can find networks with a minimum PR limit, networks that have a certain topic, and general networks. The more sites you put into the network, the more links per day you can get. Simple as that.
I gave it a try starting back in late August. I went directly to internal pages on a few sites and also linked to some tier 1 links like press releases and hubs/lenses. Within the week I noticed a dance in Google which was a great sign. It took about a week or two to finally settle and I jumped from #8 to #3 for a fairly competitive keyword, #6 to #2 for a much tougher keyword, and #13 to #6 for another tough keyword. I want to point out that I also sent about 10 bookmarks and 10 guestbook links to each post I did on the network. Since the rankings jumps, I have been going to town on all of my Tier 1 links and have been linking direct to my money sites. IF YOU HAVE CLIENTS, I recommend setting up a few microsites as a Tier 1. You can link direct to client sites but use your discretion.
GOY at SEOsUnite.com has an awesome post on SEO Fight Back. I had to steal his graphics for this post.
Strategy for using SEO Fightback
Well, there you have it. I fully recommend investing in SEO Fightback. I should also mention that Mike has set up an awesome forum for SEO Fightback support, tips, and tricks. Access comes with your purchase. You can actually communicate with the owner/dev of the network which is incredibly rare as well as beneficial.
Hope you guys like the review. Let me know if you see similar results.
